During last year’s mid-term elections, the Knight-funded Wesleyan Media Project provided real-time analysis of the 1.6 million political ads aired on behalf of state and federal candidates. Together they cost a record breaking $735 million – and comprised the most negative campaign in history, the project found.

Tomorrow at 10 a.m. EDT, watch online as the project’s leaders delve into how they went about their analysis. The seminar is being livestreamed here.

Knight Foundation President and CEO Alberto Ibargüen, a Wesleyan alum, will speak along with Assistant Government Professor Erika Franklin Fowler.

The East Biloxi Castaways won Saturday’s Battlestorm tournament and, along with a trophy, got 500 free hurricane kits to distribute in their neighborhood. In the lead up to the tournament and at the event 300 additional hurricane kits were distributed to players, families and around town.

Because of the success of the hurricane prep game funded by Knight Foundation, the Boy and Girls Clubs of the Gulf Coast are planning to continue playing Battlestorm throughout the summer at five of their clubs to keep hurricane preparedness in the minds of kids and their families. And, other Boys and Girls Clubs are thinking of modifying the content of Battlestorm to address disaster preparedness more generally at other sites.

Knight Foundation is interested in new and innovative ways to tackle community issues like disaster preparedness. Last year, the foundation funded Area/Code (now part of Zynga) to use their expertise in social-impact games to create a way to help Gulf Coast families prepare for hurricane season. Area/Code worked with community partners to design Battlestorm, a game that combines freeze tag and capture the flag and teaches kids how to prepare for hurricanes at the same time. (For more background, see previous posts here and here.)

In an interview with Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Alicia Tarrant, Program Director for the Boys and Girls Club of East Biloxi, gave some background on why the game was important to the kids, many of whom lived through Hurricane Katrina: "A lot of them lost their homes. Many of them had to wait it out in the attic, maybe even a tree, hanging on. Others evacuated and weren't able to come back for a very long time…"

Congrats to the Castaways for proving that their team statement was right on: “After the storm, many residents of East Biloxi felt like ‘castaways,’… However, we persevered and are on our way back—stronger than we were before!” And, more prepared!

Coming soon - video from the game and later this year a full evaluation of its effectiveness.

Written by Knight’s Eric Newton, "Searchlights and Sunglasses" is a digital expedition through the major issues facing the field, with insights for any journalist, educator, student or news consumer interested in ensuring that good journalism survives.

What makes the book unique is its design: With one click, it turns into an educational tool with a learning layer providing more than 1,000 lesson plan ideas and resources to ensure students are ready for digital jobs. It will be available online and via Kindle tomorrow Oct. 17.

“Eric Newton provides a highly critical, sometimes scathing, and wholly on point critique of the state of journalism education. He makes the case that desperately needed transformation in the digital age is coming about even more slowly in journalism schools than it is in the news industry – and in many cases change is not happening at all. But Newton, who over the past decade has been a clarion voice for dramatic J-school reform, rethinking and reinvigoration, doesn’t just chide the academy. He provides a detailed, positive and uplifting blueprint of how to move forward. Some of the ideas are bold, but many others just seem to be so from inside the tradition-bound confines of so many universities.”

“... hiring the best journalists into professional schools to teach, research, experiment and innovate … is a provacative, even radical notion to many in the academy. And Newton correctly notes that even the relatively few schools that have made dramatic changes over the past decade need to do more -- and move faster … ‘Searchlights and Sunglasses’ is a must-read for journalism students, professors, deans and – most important – university presidents as they consider what journalism education, and ultimately journalism itself, needs to be in the digital future.”

-- Christopher Callahan, founding dean, vice provost and professor, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University

“‘Searchlights and Sunglasses’ perfectly exemplifies how cutting-edge technology can be used to achieve the best pedagogical results. This digital book on the present and future of journalism will do wonders to educate a new generation of reporters and writers … making learning fun and interactive. (It) will resonate immensely with students and teachers alike.”

-- Raul Reis, dean, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Florida International University

“Eric Newton’s book ‘Searchlights and Sunglasses’ is a must-read for anyone who works in the field of journalism and communications. Newton draws insights from the extensive work Knight Foundation has done in the field of media innovation and provides an invaluable guide to understanding the current state of the field and its tools. He discusses innovations and collaborations that can help us adapt to constant change and make sense out of the massive amount of information at the tip of our fingers. In the digital age, we need to learn to experiment and to expose, to curate and to provide context. “Searchlights and Sunglasses” is the perfect guide to learning how to do that.”

Over 40 media outlets published original stories about the new report from the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, released Thursday at the Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C. "Restoring the Balance: Dollars, Values, and the Future of College Sports" warns of accelerating spending on college sports and potential threats to college and university finances. The Commission calls for greater transparency on spending in college sports; new policies for distributing television revenue that value academic performance; and ensuring that college athletes are treated as students, not as professional athletes.